Chiaroscuro
Charming talk at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival by two novelists who had written novels about artists. The event was a well chaired discussion between the authors, led by Nicolette Jones, bringing out the reasons they wrote the books and their different approaches. This made it much more dynamic that just each talking about their own book in isolation. They had obviously each read and enjoyed the others books which led to a good conversations. Amy Sackville talked about “Painter to the King” about Velazquez at the Spanish Court. She said she started by wanting to invent a court painter at a Baroque court as a painter is an observer plus she wanted to use the world of Jacobean plays. In the end she felt she just kept inventing Velazquez so just used him! Elizabeth Macneal talked about “Doll Factory” a novel based in the world of the Pre-Raphaelites but using imagined main characters. She said she began by looking at the famous p...